Moler's Musings

This week in 7th grade, we continued working our way through Ancient Greece. We started with the Golden Age of Athens and ended the week beginning our investigation of Alexander the Great. In between, students spent some time looking at just how much Ancient Greece still shows up in their lives today.

One thing I liked about this week was that we didn’t just learn about the achievements of Ancient Greece and move on. Students first learned about them through stations, then had to process what made the Golden Age “golden.” From there, they looked for those Greek influences in the modern world and decided which ones actually have the biggest impact on their own lives.

By Friday, we were ready to start asking a different kind of question. Instead of looking at what the Greeks created, we began looking at how Greek culture spread beyond Greece. That brought us to Alexander the Great.

Monday: Exploring the Golden Age of Athens

We started the week continuing our study of Ancient Greece by looking at the Golden Age of Athens. After the Persian Wars, Athens became wealthier and more powerful, and this period produced ideas and achievements that are still connected to Greece today. Rather than going through each achievement together, students worked through six different stations focused on different areas of Greek culture.

At each station, students read information, looked at examples, and answered questions. There was quite a bit of information to work through, so I wasn’t worried about everyone finishing in one day. I wanted students to have time to actually read and work with the information rather than race from station to station just to say they were finished.

The goal was to build a foundation. Before we could talk about the influence of Ancient Greece on our world today, students needed to understand what was actually happening during the Golden Age and what the Greeks were creating, thinking about, and doing differently.

Tuesday: Check It, Fix It, and Put It Together

Students started Tuesday by finishing any Golden Age stations they had left from Monday. Once everyone finished, I hung the answers to the stations around the room. Students took their papers, moved around the classroom, checked their responses, and made corrections. If something was wrong, they fixed it. If they were missing information, they added it.

I liked having students move around the room and check their own work instead of standing at the front and going through every answer together. They had to find the information, compare it to what they had written, and decide what needed to change. It also gave them another look at the information from all six stations before we asked them to do something with it.

Thick Slides: What Made the Golden Age Golden?

After checking their work, students created a Thick Slide to bring everything together. They used the information from their stations to share four facts about the Golden Age, add pictures that represented what they had learned, and respond to the bigger question: What made the Golden Age golden?

This was the piece I wanted after the stations. The stations gave students a lot of individual pieces of information, but the Thick Slide asked them to step back and make sense of all of it. Instead of just knowing that Athens had philosophers, impressive architecture, theater, art, and other achievements, they had to think about why all of those things together made this period significant.

It also gave us a good bridge into what we were going to do next. Students had spent two days learning about what came out of the Golden Age. Now we were ready to see where some of those ideas ended up.

Wednesday: Finding Ancient Greece in Our World

On Wednesday, we shifted from learning about the Golden Age to looking for Greek influence in the world around us. I handed students directions that contained the same six categories they had worked with during the stations. Instead of letting everyone immediately pick whatever topic they wanted, I had students roll a die. Whatever number they rolled determined the category they would work with.

Once students had their category, they still had some choice. They selected a Greek influence from that category and created an Iron Chef slide about it. I tried to make the choices a mixture of things students might expect and things they probably would not immediately connect to Ancient Greece. There were the more obvious connections, but there were also Disney movies, Percy Jackson, and local examples such as the Cincinnati Observatory.

Iron Chef: Greek Influence

Students used their topic to create one slide that taught the rest of the class about that Greek influence and its connection to our world today. The roll of the dice gave them some limits, but they still had choice within the category. More importantly, it kept everyone from choosing the same two or three topics.

I liked the shift from Tuesday to Wednesday. On Tuesday, students were answering What made the Golden Age golden? On Wednesday, they were starting to answer another question: Where can we still see it? By the end of class, we had a collection of student-created examples that we could use for the next day’s lesson.

Thursday: How Much Does Ancient Greece Affect You?

Before class on Thursday, I took all of the Iron Chef slides students had created and compiled them into one large slideshow. Instead of presenting the slides one at a time, students worked their way through the collection and looked at what their classmates had created.

The goal wasn’t to copy information from every slide. Students had already spent Wednesday researching one influence in more depth. Now I wanted them to see just how many different examples the class had found. As they worked through the slideshow, they saw Greek influence in everything from government and architecture to mythology, entertainment, sports, science, and places around Cincinnati.

Tier List: Greek Influence Today

We used a Tier List to process the slides, but I changed the question a little. I didn’t want students ranking which Greek contribution was the most historically important. Instead, I asked them to think about their own lives and rank the influences based on how much each one affects them today.

That made the activity much more personal. There wasn’t necessarily one correct Tier List. A student who reads Percy Jackson or watches movies connected to Greek mythology might rank mythology differently than someone else. Other students might recognize Greek influence in sports, government, architecture, or something they see around Cincinnati.

Students had spent the beginning of the week learning about Ancient Greece as history. By Thursday, they were looking at how much of that history is still sitting right in front of them.

Friday: Two Different Alexanders

Friday started with something new. I wanted students to learn Number Mania, but I didn’t want their first experience with the protocol to also require them to figure out a bunch of new history content. We started with a simple practice. Students had to take a slide and add two numbers, a title, and a picture. That gave them a chance to understand the basic structure before we used it with Alexander the Great.

Once they had the idea, we moved into Alexander. This time, however, students were not all given the same reading. Some students received a reading that presented Alexander in a positive way, focusing on his accomplishments, military success, empire, and the spread of Greek culture. Other students received a much more negative version that focused on the violence, destruction, and terror that came with his conquests.

The students didn’t know there were two different readings.

Number Mania Meets Archetypes

Students started creating their Number Mania slides using the Alexander they had been given. About halfway through, I decided to add another layer to the activity. I gave students a list of positive and negative archetypes and asked them to choose one that they thought fit Alexander based on their reading.

This is where things got interesting because they were confused.

Some students who had read the positive version of Alexander couldn’t understand why I had included so many negative archetypes. Students with the negative reading were looking at some of the positive choices wondering how those could possibly describe the guy they had just read about.

At first, I wasn’t sure how well adding the archetypes halfway through was going to work. The confusion actually ended up helping.

Teach Your Alexander

Students paired up and shared what they had learned about Alexander. As they started talking, they realized that they had not all been given the same version of the story. One student had learned about a successful military leader who created an enormous empire and helped spread Greek culture. The student sitting next to them might have learned about a conqueror who destroyed cities and used violence and fear to expand that same empire.

They were talking about the same person, but the stories didn’t sound the same.

That gave us the question we will continue with next week: Does Alexander deserve to be called “The Great”?

I could have started the lesson by putting that question on the board and telling students there were positive and negative ways to view Alexander. Instead, the different readings and archetypes allowed them to discover that problem on their own. The confusion over the archetypes actually became part of the lesson. Students had to talk to someone else before they understood why the choices they were seeing did not seem to match the Alexander they knew.

We ended the week with more questions about Alexander than we started with, which is probably a pretty good place to begin an inquiry.

Lessons For The Week

Monday – I can’t share the file, I don’t have permission.

Tuesday – Thick Slide

Wednesday – Iron Chef Slide, Directions

Thursday – Tier List

Friday – Alexander the Great Readings, Number Mania

This week in 103, we moved from examining Athenian democracy to exploring the Persian Wars and the Golden Age of Athens. We began by gathering evidence and developing an argument about whether Ancient Athens was truly democratic. From there, we used maps, readings, whiteboards, and sketches to understand the Persian Wars and how victory helped Athens grow stronger.

We finished the week with a scaffolded Research EduProtocol. Students gathered and shared facts about the Golden Age, ranked information from their classmates, and used that evidence to write. Throughout the week, each activity gave students something to work with in the next.

Monday: Building a Case About Athenian Democracy

I was absent on Monday, but students continued working with our question: Was Ancient Athens truly democratic? The previous Thursday and Friday, they had created a Thick Slide using evidence and information from Documents A and B. Monday’s lesson followed that same structure with two additional documents.

Thick Slides: Who Could Participate?

Document C was a table showing the percentages of citizens and noncitizens in Athens and who could participate in society. Document D was a secondary source about ostracism and its relationship to democracy. Together, these documents gave students more information to consider as they examined participation and power in Athens.

Students created a Thick Slide that included four to five facts from the documents, a comparison of the two sources, a picture they created, and a quote. The familiar format allowed them to continue the work we had started while adding evidence that could help them answer our larger question.

Stake Your Claim: Organizing the Evidence

I also left a Stake Your Claim EduProtocol. Students used their Thick Slides to develop a claim, select evidence, identify the document each piece of evidence came from, and explain their reasoning.

This moved students from gathering information to deciding what that information supported. They needed to explain how their evidence helped answer whether Ancient Athens was truly democratic.

By the end of the lesson, students had an organizer to build their written response from. Their Thick Slides held the information; Stake Your Claim helped them organize it into an argument.

Tuesday: Turning Evidence Into an Argument

I returned on Tuesday, and we began with Fast & Curious on Gimkit. I brought back the same Ancient Greece questions we had used two or three weeks earlier. Students did great! It was encouraging to see how much they remembered as we continued building on that earlier learning.

From Stake Your Claim to Scriblit

After our review, I reminded students of the Stake Your Claim organizer they had completed on Monday. Then we busted out Scriblit. Students used their organizers to write a formal claim, evidence, and reasoning response to our question: Was Ancient Athens truly democratic?

They already had a claim, evidence from the documents, and reasoning to work with. Now they needed to put those pieces together into a clear written response.

Checking the Claims

I gave students ten minutes to write and circulated as they worked. One thing I paid close attention to was how they started their claims. Were they beginning with “yes” or “no”? Were they using first-person language such as “I think” or “I believe”?

Those are two habits I want students to move away from in formal claims. I want them to answer the question directly and make a statement they can support with evidence. Circulating while they typed gave me a chance to offer that feedback while they were still working.

Battle Royale

Once the writing time ended, we ran a Battle Royale round with their responses. It was fun, and it gave us a different way to finish this part of our work on Athenian democracy.

Over the last few lessons, students had examined documents, gathered information in Thick Slides, organized an argument with Stake Your Claim, and written a formal response. Each step gave them something to use in the next.

And, in the interest of keeping this recap honest, we did something else that day, too. As I’m writing this, I cannot remember what it was. That’s the week it’s been.

Wednesday: Setting the Stage for the Persian Wars

After finishing our work on Athenian democracy, we turned our attention to the Persian Wars. This felt like a natural next step in our study of Greece. Understanding the conflict would help students see how Athens grew stronger and how the Greek victory helped set the stage for its Golden Age.

Wednesday’s class periods were shortened, so we focused on the geography and events that led to the war.

Map & Tell: Planning an Invasion

We began with a map and two questions. What challenges might the Persians face traveling from their empire to attack Athens? If students were leading the invasion, would they attack by land or by sea?

Students needed to use two details from the map to explain the challenges and support their choice of invasion route with geographic evidence. This brought us back to something we have returned to throughout the unit: geography shaped the choices people could make.

Sketch & Tell: How Did Athens Get Involved?

Next, students used a reading to sketch and label six stages leading into the Persian Wars. Breaking the background into stages gave them a way to follow the sequence and show how one event led to another.

They also answered the question: How did helping the Ionian rebels get Athens into a war with Persia? That explanation asked students to put the connection into words after representing it through their sketches.

Thursday: From the Persian Wars to the Golden Age

Thursday’s work moved us into the battles themselves. Students would first focus on one battle, then use their classmates’ work to piece together the larger story.

Iron Chef on the Whiteboards

Students read about their assigned battle and worked together to create a whiteboard that taught classmates what happened and why it mattered. Each board needed the battle’s name and year, a summary in their own words, a labeled sketch, and an explanation of its importance.

For the summary, we used Somebody, Wanted, But, So, Then. Who fought? What were they trying to accomplish? What obstacle did they face? What did they do? What was the result?

That structure gave students a way to organize the reading. Their labeled sketch showed an important moment or strategy, while the “Why it mattered” section asked for two to three sentences explaining how the battle affected what happened next.

Students also needed to write large and organize their boards so classmates could read them during the gallery walk. The boards were going to become a resource for the next part of the lesson.

Gallery Walk: Sketch & Tell, Comic Edition

Students used the whiteboards to retell the Persian Wars through sketches and captions. Their comic included Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis, and Plataea, followed by a final panel focused on Athens.

Each battle needed a sketch and a caption. The Athens panel asked students to show how victory helped the city-state grow stronger. That final panel gave the battles a larger purpose and brought us toward our next topic: the Golden Age of Athens.

I like having students use what their classmates create. The whiteboard gave each group responsibility for explaining one part of the story, and the comic asked every student to put those parts together.

Wicked Hydra: A First Look at the Golden Age

We closed class with a Wicked Hydra to introduce the Golden Age of Athens. I had ChatGPT create an image representing the period and taped copies around the room.

Students had three minutes to write questions about what they noticed in the image. Then they rotated to a new board, read the questions already there, and added more of their own. We rotated again so students could continue building on their classmates’ questions.

The final panel of their Persian Wars comic asked how Athens grew stronger after the war. Now, the image gave them a chance to imagine what that stronger Athens might look like and ask questions about it. Those questions gave us a starting point for exploring the Golden Age.

Friday: What Made Athens’s Golden Age “Golden”?

On Friday, we dove into the Golden Age of Athens with a question: Why was 480–404 BCE considered the Golden Age for Athens? Thursday’s Wicked Hydra had given students a chance to ask questions about the period. Now we used a scaffolded version of the Research EduProtocol to gather information and develop an answer.

Research: Building a Shared Collection of Facts

In the Research EduProtocol, students investigate a question and crowdsource information to help answer it. They submit facts and their sources through a Google Form, with the responses feeding into a linked Google Sheet. That spreadsheet becomes a shared resource students can use in their writing.

For this round, I provided some support. I used ChatGPT to create seven articles drawing on seven different sources related to our question. Students received different articles and shared two facts from their assigned reading through the Google Form.

Then I sent them into the wild, wild west of the internet. Students did a Google search and submitted an additional fact, along with its source. The provided articles gave them a starting point before they searched on their own.

Tier List: Paraphrasing and Ranking

Once students submitted their facts, I shared the spreadsheet with everyone. They now had access to information gathered by the entire class.

I gave students a Tier List and ten minutes to paraphrase and rank six to seven facts from the shared collection. They needed to consider which facts would be most useful in explaining why this period was considered a golden age.

This step gave students time to work with the information before writing. They put facts into their own words and made decisions about which evidence would best help them answer the question.

Scriblit: Putting the Evidence to Work

Then we busted out Scriblit. Students had ten minutes to develop a paragraph answering our question, using at least two pieces of evidence.

Their Tier Lists gave them a place to start. They had already selected, paraphrased, and ranked information. Now they needed to use that evidence to explain what made the period a golden age for Athens.

The main sequence followed three ten-minute blocks: read and share two to three facts, paraphrase and rank, and develop a paragraph. That kept the work moving and gave each part a clear purpose.

We also fit in two rounds of Fast & Curious on Gimkit, with Golden Age questions added to our question set. Across the class period, students encountered the information, shared it, considered its value, and used it to write an answer.

Lessons for the Week

Monday – Thick Slide and Stake Your Claim

Wednesday and Thursday – Persian Wars Rack and Stack

Friday – Tier List

This week in 103, we built on our work with Greek geography, city-states, and governments by taking a closer look at Athens and Sparta. Monday and Tuesday focused on how life differed between the two, with students moving from maps and partner readings to scenarios and writing about a day in the life of an Athenian, a Spartan, and themselves.

From there, exploring Athenian democracy felt like the natural next step. On Wednesday and Thursday, we worked through what democratic means, sketched the parts of Athens’s government, and began examining primary sources. Those activities gave students a foundation for considering the question that would guide our next few lessons: Was Ancient Athens truly democratic?

Monday: How Different Were Athens and Sparta?

After exploring Greek city-states and their governments, we turned our attention to Athens and Sparta. Both were Greek city-states, but daily life looked different depending on which one you called home.

Fast & Curious and Map & Tell

We started with Fast & Curious on Gimkit, followed by a Map & Tell to locate Athens and Sparta. Students used the map to predict which city-state relied more on sea trade and which relied more on farming. This brought us back to our earlier work with geography and how location could shape the way people lived.

CyberSandwich: Two Readings, One Comparison

Then we moved into CyberSandwich. I handed out two different readings, with one partner reading about Athens and the other reading about Sparta. Students read and took notes on their assigned city-state, looking at geography, government, education, and social life.

Partners then compared their notes. Each student brought different information to the conversation, so they needed to share what they had learned while gathering information about the other city-state. The categories helped organize that discussion and gave them specific points to compare.

Writing About Both City-States

From there, students wrote a summary using a compare-and-contrast text structure. Their notes and partner conversations gave them information about both places. Now they needed to organize those details into an explanation of how Athens and Sparta were alike and different.

I like giving the partner discussion a clear purpose. Students needed information from each other to complete the writing, and the comparison gave them a reason to look closely at both readings.

Tuesday: Putting the Details to Work

Monday gave students a foundation for comparing Athens and Sparta. On Tuesday, we returned to that information and asked students to apply it, first through scenarios and then through writing from different perspectives.

Fast & Curious and City-State Scenarios

We started with another round of Fast & Curious on Gimkit. Then, I used ChatGPT to create scenarios about life in each city-state. Students had to decide whether each scenario applied to Athens or Sparta and explain their reasoning.

The explanation mattered here. Students needed to connect details in the scenario to something they had learned about the city-state. That gave us another opportunity to revisit the differences in education, government, geography, and daily life.

3xPOV: A Day in the Life

We finished with a 3xPOV: a day in the life of an Athenian, a Spartan, and themselves. Students used details from their learning to describe life from each perspective.

Including themselves gave students a familiar point of comparison. They could consider their own schooling and daily routines alongside what they had learned about Athens and Sparta.

Across the two days, students kept working with the same information in different ways. They located the city-states, read about one, learned about the other from a partner, and wrote a comparison. The scenarios and 3xPOV then asked them to use those details to explain where a situation belonged and how someone’s daily life could change depending on where they lived.

Wednesday: Was Ancient Athens Truly Democratic?

After comparing Athens and Sparta, exploring Athenian democracy felt like the natural next step. I found a lesson from the Digital Inquiry Group (DIG) and drew some inspiration from Drew Skeeler. The question that would guide our next few days was: Was Ancient Athens truly democratic?

Before students could answer that, we needed to spend some time with the word democratic and learn more about how Athens’s government worked.

Fast & Curious and a Frayer

We started with Fast & Curious on Gimkit to build background knowledge about Athens and introduce vocabulary. Then, we “Frayered” the word democratic.

Students read a brief passage and used it to create a definition, identify examples and non-examples, and predict what a true democracy would look like. That last part gave us something to return to as we examined Athens. What would students expect to see in a democratic government, and how would Athens compare?

Building a Visual

Next, I showed a TED-Ed video about Athenian democracy. I wanted students to begin building a picture of the Assembly, the Council of 500, and the courts before we took a closer look at each one.

The Frayer gave us a starting point for thinking about democracy, and the video introduced the structures we would work with on Thursday.

Thursday: How Did Athenian Democracy Work?

On Thursday, we picked up with the parts of Athenian government students had seen in the video. Now they would read about each one and make decisions about how to represent it.

Sketch & Tell-O: What They Did and How They Were Chosen

We started with a Sketch & Tell-O focused on the Assembly. Students read about it, sketched what it did, and added a caption. Underneath that, they sketched how citizens became part of the Assembly and captioned that drawing, too. I put three minutes on the timer for the round.

Then we repeated the process with the Council of 500 and the courts. Each round asked students to consider the same two things: what that part of government did and how citizens became involved.

I like separating those questions because knowing a group’s job only tells us part of how a government works. Looking at how people become part of that group brings us back to who has access to power.

Two Documents, Two Views of Democracy

We finished class by reading two documents: one from Pericles and one from Aristotle’s Athenian Constitution. Students highlighted details that stood out to them and used the documents to create a Thick Slide.

The slide asked for two facts from each document related to democracy, a quote that stood out, and a comparison of how the two documents portrayed Athenian democracy. Students had to choose details from both sources and consider how those details fit together.

Our question carried through both days. We started by considering what democratic means, looked at how Athens’s government operated, and then began examining documents. Each step gave students more information to work with as they considered whether Ancient Athens was truly democratic.

Lessons for the Week

Monday – Athens vs. Sparta Rack and Stack

Wednesday – DIG Athens Lesson, Day 1 Rack and Stack

Thursday – Day 2 Rack and Stack

This week in 103, we built on our work with Greek geography to explore city-states and the governments that shaped them. Students moved from reading and discussing to whiteboards, writing, and gummy bear governments. MAP testing made the schedule a little unusual, but we kept connecting our learning around who held power and what it meant to be part of a Greek city-state.

Tuesday: What Makes a City-State More Than Just a City?

Tuesday picked up where we left off with Greek geography. Mountains and seas separated communities and helped lead to the growth of independent city-states. Now we needed to build on that with a question: What makes a city-state more than just a city?

Fast & Curious and a Frayer

We started with Fast & Curious on Gimkit to revisit previous learning, followed by a Frayer on citizen. This gave us a chance to look at both rights and responsibilities. Being a citizen meant belonging to a community, having a role in it, and being expected to contribute. We also looked at who had those political rights in Ancient Greece and who was left out.

CyberSandwich: Read and Take Notes

Then we moved into CyberSandwich. Students had 10 minutes to read and take notes, choosing five important facts that could help them answer our question. The reading went beyond the buildings and places within a polis to explore its government, laws, citizen-soldiers, and shared identity.

To the Boards: Choose the Top Three

For the partner discussion, students found whiteboard space, compared their notes, and ranked their top three facts before writing them on the board. I like giving that conversation a specific job. Partners had to decide which facts mattered most for answering the question and agree on what deserved a spot on their board.

Writing and a Battle Royale

From there, students used Scriblit to write their responses, and we ran a Battle Royale with their writing. The same question carried us through the lesson, from reading to partner discussion to writing. Each step gave students another opportunity to explain how a city-state functioned as an independent community and what held that community together.

Wednesday: Who Holds the Power?

Tuesday’s work on city-states gave us a place to start on Wednesday. Each polis had its own government, but those governments did not all operate the same way. We began with Fast & Curious on the four types we would be working with: democracy, oligarchy, tyranny, and monarchy.

Iron Chef on the Whiteboards

I handed out one of the four government readings to students, and they partnered up to create an Iron Chef whiteboard. Each pair had to explain who held power, how they gained it, how much influence ordinary citizens had, and one possible strength and weakness of that government. They also included a picture to represent it.

The secret ingredient was to explain how power worked in their government in exactly five words. That little constraint gave partners another decision to make. They had to choose words that captured the idea while staying within the limit.

Read the Room

Once the boards were ready, students received a Frayer divided into the four government types. They walked around the room, read each other’s boards, and recorded three important facts about each one. Partners had focused on one government for their Iron Chef, and the walk gave them a chance to learn about the other three.

The same ideas carried across all four: who gets to make decisions, how they get that power, and how much say everyone else has. Those questions would follow us into the next activity.

Thursday and Friday: Gummy Bear Governments

MAP testing made Thursday and Friday’s schedule a little weird, so we spread our next activity across both days. Students had read about the governments, created their boards, and gathered notes. Now I handed out gummy bears and asked them to show how each government worked.

Making Power Visible

Students arranged their gummy bears into scenes representing democracy, oligarchy, tyranny, and monarchy. They could use construction paper and props to help show who held power and how the other bears fit into the system.

This is where the differences mattered. Monarchy and tyranny both involve one ruler, so showing one bear in charge only tells part of the story. The scene and explanation needed to communicate how that ruler gained power. Democracy and oligarchy also needed to show a clear difference in who had a voice.

Explain the Scene

For each government, students were asked to include a photo, explain how the government worked, and identify one positive and one negative. They also explained what was happening in their gummy bear scene so the arrangement connected to the content.

I like this progression because students keep working with the same information in different ways. They read it, choose what matters, learn from each other’s boards, and then make decisions about how to represent it. The gummy bears give them something to build with, but the explanation is where they have to connect that construction to their understanding of government.

Lessons for the Week

Tuesday – City States Rack and Stack, Reading

Wednesday – Governments Rack and Stack (Frayer with Mr. Roughton Template), Reading

Most weeks, this space leans heavily into what is happening in 8th-grade American History. This week, I’m heading down a grade level to share what has been happening in 7th-grade World History.

In Ohio, 7th grade covers a lot of ground—from Ancient Greece to the First Global Age. Before jumping into all of that history, though, I wanted students to spend some time thinking about the kind of classroom we want to build together. Instead of handing them a list of expectations, we built our own.

Monday: From Sketches to Statements

We started with a Sketch and Tell-O. I asked students to visualize what they felt was most important in a classroom environment. They had four minutes to sketch their ideas, followed by a quick explanation. Then, each student narrowed everything they had drawn down to a single word.

They shared their words with a partner and began looking for common threads. What ideas kept showing up? What did people seem to value? What kind of classroom were they describing?

Next came an index-card version of a Thin Slide. On one side, students wrote three or four words they believed were essential to a successful classroom. On the back, they used those words to draft a personal classroom mission statement. I modeled one first, but many students had already written personal mission statements before, so the transition to a classroom mission came naturally.

Then came my favorite part.

Students entered their mission statements into Scriblit, and we held a battle royale. They read the statements, discussed them, and narrowed the field round by round until one remained at the top. I could have written a classroom mission statement myself and put it on the wall, but that would have missed the point. The discussion, debate, and collective ownership were what mattered.

We closed with a Frayer Model of the winning mission statement. Students considered what the mission should look like in four different relationships:

• Student to student
• Teacher to student
• Student to teacher
• Student to classroom

By the end of class, the words were theirs. The mission was theirs. Most importantly, the expectations were theirs.

Tuesday and Wednesday: Building Better Paraphrasers

Tuesday and Wednesday were connected by one goal. I wanted students to practice taking information, putting it into their own words, and recognizing what makes a strong summary.

Cyber Sandwich: Ancient Greek Olympians

On Tuesday, I introduced students to the process of a Cyber Sandwich. We used a half-page article about athletes in the ancient Greek Olympics. It explained how hard the athletes trained, how winners were celebrated, and how their prize was a wreath made from leaves.

Since this was our first Cyber Sandwich, the focus was more on learning the process than mastering the content. Students had 10 minutes to read and take notes. Then, they had five minutes to compare and discuss their notes with a partner. Finally, they used their notes and conversation to write a summary.

Battle Royale: The Strongest Summary

Students entered their summaries into Scriblit, and we finished with a battle royale. They read the different summaries and voted round by round until one was left. This gave students a chance to see what other people wrote and think about what made one summary stronger than another.

Parafly: Weird Facts Edition

On Wednesday, we focused entirely on practicing Parafly, but I added a small twist. I used ChatGPT to generate weird facts that were one, two, or three sentences long. I copied the facts into Socrative, and students had one or two minutes to paraphrase each one.

ChatGPT Feedback

After each round, I copied all the anonymous student responses into ChatGPT along with the original fact. I asked ChatGPT to choose the strongest paraphrase and explain why it was effective. Students immediately saw a strong example and heard feedback they could use during the next round. Then, we tried it again with a new fact.

Hi-Chews and Cheesy Bracelets

Of course, we needed prizes. Each winner could choose a Hi-Chew or a cheesy bracelet. The prizes were small and a little ridiculous, but the practice was real. Students paraphrased, looked at a strong example, received immediate feedback, and tried again. Each round gave them another chance to improve.

Thursday: How Did Geography Shape Ancient Greece?

On Thursday, we officially started our Ancient Greece unit. Our compelling question for the unit is: How does Ancient Greece still impact our world today? Before students can answer that question, they need to understand the land where Greek civilization developed. Our supporting question for the day was: How did geography shape life in Ancient Greece?

Fast and Curious: Greek Geography

We started with a Fast and Curious using Gimkit. Students had four to five minutes to answer 30 questions correctly. This gave students an early introduction to the vocabulary and ideas they would encounter throughout the lesson. They did not need to know everything yet. This was simply their first exposure.

Frayer: Peninsula and City-State

Next, students completed Frayer Models for peninsula and city-state. For peninsula, students paraphrased the definition, identified two examples, and created an image. For city-state, they created their own definition, paraphrased the provided definition, identified two examples, and added an image. This took about 10 minutes and gave students the vocabulary they needed to understand the reading that came next.

Parafly: Mountains and Seas

Students then completed a six-minute Parafly about the geography of Ancient Greece. The first paragraph explained how mountains made travel difficult, separated communities, and contributed to the development of independent city-states.

The second paragraph explained how the seas connected the Greeks through travel and trade. Sea trade was especially important because Greece lacked resources such as timber, precious metals, and good farmland.

Students paraphrased each paragraph and then wrote a three-sentence summary answering this question: How did Greece’s geography both separate and connect the ancient Greeks?

Map and Tell: Finding the Evidence

We finished with a Map and Tell. Students studied a map of Ancient Greece and found two pieces of evidence that supported what they had learned during the Parafly.

For each piece of evidence, they completed this statement:

I notice __________. This supports the idea that __________ because __________.

This final step pushed students beyond simply identifying mountains, islands, or bodies of water on a map. They had to connect what they could see on the map to what they had just read and paraphrased.

The lesson moved from vocabulary, to reading, to paraphrasing, and finally to applying the information to a map. Each activity prepared students for the next one while keeping the focus on a single question: How did geography shape life in Ancient Greece?

Friday: Seeing Geography Through Different Perspectives

Friday was about taking what students learned on Thursday and doing something with it. We stayed with the same supporting question: How did geography shape life in Ancient Greece?

Fast and Curious: One More Round

We started with another round of the Greek geography Gimkit. Students had already seen the vocabulary and basic ideas on Thursday, so this gave them another chance to build their background knowledge and improve their scores.

Reading: Geography Shapes Greek Life

Next, students read Geography Shapes Greek Life. The reading added more detail about how the mountains, seas, islands, and limited farmland affected where Greeks lived, how they traveled, and how they made a living.

Sketch and Tell-O: Four Effects of Geography

After reading, students completed a Sketch and Tell-O on paper. For the sketch, they showed four ways geography shaped life in Ancient Greece. For the tell, they wrote at least four sentences explaining how those parts of Greece’s geography affected the ancient Greeks. This gave students a chance to process the same information in two ways. First, they had to visualize it. Then, they had to explain it in writing.

3xPOV: Life in Ancient Greece

We finished with a 3xPOV. Students used what they learned from the reading to imagine how three different people might have experienced life in Ancient Greece. First, they wrote from the perspective of a Greek farmer. They considered what the farmer could grow, the challenges the land created, and the choices a farming family might have to make. Next, they became a Greek merchant. They thought about where the merchant would travel, how they would get there, and which resources they might need to trade for. Finally, they wrote from the perspective of someone who was extremely loyal to their city-state. They explained how Greece’s geography might have shaped that person’s community, daily life, and connection to other Greeks.

The 3xPOV moved students beyond listing geographic features. They had to think about how the same mountains, seas, and limited farmland could affect people differently depending on how they lived. Students turned in both their Sketch and Tell-O and their 3xPOV at the end of class. It was a solid way to close our first look at Ancient Greece and move from simply learning the geography to understanding how people experienced it.

Lessons for the Week

Thursday – Ancient Greece Rack and Stack

Friday – Ancient Greece Rack and Stack (SKATO and 3xPOV)

A new year begins. This week was a lot of reflecting on some new practices I wanted to implement in my classroom. One of those practices was a new approach to classroom rules and procedures. Oftentimes, teachers talk about preparing students for the “real world.” We say things like we are teaching students a life lesson by not giving them a pencil or helping them when they forget something. I don’t know. That rarely works. Sorry.

Instead, I started thinking about my own life and what the “real world” actually looks like. I have a lot of different roles in my life. I’m a dad, husband, teacher, coach, and a bunch of other things. I have routines that help me get through my day. I have rights and I have responsibilities. The more I thought about these things, the more I realized they naturally belong in a classroom too. The result was four things: roles, routines, rights, and responsibilities.

I literally wrote each word on a piece of paper and taped them up in my classroom. Under roles, students are learners, leaders, teachers, writers, thinkers, listeners, mistake makers, and more. We also have our learning routines. For us, those routines are EduProtocols. The content will constantly change throughout the year, but students will become familiar with how we learn.

Students also have rights in my classroom. They have the right to learn, the right to feel safe, the right to make mistakes, and the right to ask questions. With those rights come responsibilities. Students have a responsibility to manage themselves and their space, manage their Chromebook, show up on time, listen while others are speaking, and contribute to the learning of others. None of these things are groundbreaking, but I like how they naturally connect back to how I structure my classroom with EduProtocols and learning.

Wednesday

The Marker Game

For the first day of school, I stole a Dominic Helmstetter classic. I wanted to begin class with a Fast and Curious, but we didn’t have working Chromebooks yet. Instead, Fast and Curious became the Marker Game. The Marker Game is pretty simple. Students partner up, face their desks toward each other, and stand a dry erase marker between them. I read a statement about myself or the classroom that is either true or false. If students think the statement is true, they try to grab the marker before their partner. If they think it’s false, they don’t touch it.

It’s fun, active, loud, and there were a lot of laughs. It was also an easy way for students to learn some things about me and the classroom.

The 90s Thin Slide

Next, we moved into a Thin Slide, except we didn’t use a slide. Students used an index card. I used AI to create some pictures of myself in the 90s doing things that either don’t really exist anymore or might seem completely strange to kids today. I showed students the pictures and gave them three minutes to synthesize what they thought life was like in the 90s. Just like a Thin Slide, they could use one picture and one word.

I got words like “weird,” “slow,” “colorful,” and a bunch of others.

Sketch and Tell-O: Your Generation

From there, we went into a Sketch and Tell-O. I gave students a scenario: The year is 2056 and a historian is studying your generation. What four things would they think were weird? Students had to draw and label four things that they thought would stand out to someone studying their lives 30 years from now.

When they finished drawing, they discussed their ideas with a partner for one minute and then spent three minutes writing about their choices.

Overall, it was a solid first day. The students got to know a little about me, I got to see a little of their personalities, and we were able to get some early reps with learning routines we will use throughout the year. We didn’t spend the entire class going through a syllabus or talking about rules. Instead, the students were doing some of the things I want them doing all year. They looked at information, made some decisions, created something, talked to each other, and wrote.

Thursday

What Should Learning Look and Sound Like?

On Thursday, we began class with a Frayer. Instead of using the Frayer for content, I wanted students to think about what learning should actually look and sound like in our classroom. I divided the Frayer into four different situations: independent work, partner work, group work, and whole class work. Students had to describe what each should look like and sound like.

This was a good way to get students to see that there is more than just content to learn in class. There is also more than just me, the teacher, that makes a classroom work. We all have to work together to learn.

This also gave me a chance to connect back to the roles, routines, rights, and responsibilities I introduced earlier. Students have a role in their own learning, but they also have a role in helping others learn. There are going to be times this year when we work independently, with a partner, in a group, or as an entire class. Each of those situations looks and sounds a little different. If we understand our roles and responsibilities, I shouldn’t have to constantly tell students what they should be doing.

Hexagonal Thinking

Next, we transitioned into Hexagonal Thinking. I gave every student a hexagon divided into six sections and had them fill it with information about themselves. Once everyone finished their individual hexagon, the challenge became figuring out how everyone in the class connected.

Students had to find connections between their hexagons and tape them together within a confined space. The confined space added a little design thinking element because they couldn’t just spread the hexagons all over the floor. They had to think about where things went, make connections, move things around, and most importantly, talk to each other.

For this part, I sat back and watched. The students ran it. They had until the end of class to figure out how to connect everyone and fit all of the hexagons into the space. There were discussions, disagreements, moving hexagons around, finding new connections, and students trying to figure out where everyone belonged. I didn’t need to jump in and solve it for them.

They did awesome.

What I liked most about the lesson was that it went right back to what we had discussed earlier in the Frayer. The classroom doesn’t work because the teacher tells everyone what to do. Students have roles and responsibilities too. They had to listen to each other, communicate, solve a problem, and help the class accomplish something together. We weren’t really learning social studies content yet, but we were learning how our classroom is going to work.

Friday

Friday Check-In

On Friday, I started class by sharing a Google Form with a Friday check-in. The form had a combination of questions about engagement, including things like what types of lessons have engaged you in the past, along with some other questions that will hopefully help me become a better teacher for these students. I have never taught most of these kids before, so instead of assuming I know what works for them, I figured I should probably ask.

I also added one question that confused a lot of the students:

“Write about a snowman.”

That’s it. Write about a snowman.

Students thought it was a weird question, and I got all kinds of responses. Here are two examples:

1. They are made of snow, tall, have a carrot nose, sticks as arms, buttons, and are cold.
2. A snowman was lost in the woods. He had been lost for years and years and couldn’t find his way out of the thick forest, until he met another snowman. The other snowman led him out of the forest so he wouldn’t be so lost anymore.

Same directions. Two completely different ways of thinking.

You will have sensing students who tend to be more concrete and to the point. Then you have intuitive students whose minds may immediately go somewhere more creative. Neither student ignored the directions. Neither response was wrong. They just approached the exact same prompt differently.

I think that’s important to remember. The next time you start to feel like students aren’t listening to directions, or you find yourself saying, “I told them three times,” remember that perhaps they are listening. Their mind may just go somewhere different first. We all think differently. That’s why I asked students to write about a snowman.

Sketch and Tell-O the Syllabus

After the check-in, I finally handed out my syllabus. Instead of reading through the entire thing to the students, I paired it with a Sketch and Tell-O. Students read the syllabus and had to sketch and label four things that stood out to them or they thought were the most important.

When they finished, they discussed their choices with a partner for two minutes and then spent another two minutes writing about why they chose those things.

Once they finished, I spent around 5-10 minutes going over a few of the things from the syllabus that I actually needed to explain, including the grading system and a few other important pieces. I didn’t need to read every word to them. They had already read it, decided what they thought was important, discussed it, and wrote about it. I could fill in the gaps.

FlipSwitch

Time permitting, we finished class with a Mark Wallace special, FlipSwitch. FlipSwitch starts with a problem. From there, students identify the desired outcome using an action verb. I like this because oftentimes we know what we want the outcome to be, but we don’t think about what we actually need to do to get there. If we don’t figure out that first action, the problem usually doesn’t get solved.

The next part of FlipSwitch is identifying a next step, again using an action verb. Students can then sketch, write, or even add a GIF showing what solving and not solving the problem would look like.

For our first rep, I gave students a pretty common classroom problem: My Chromebook is dead.

Now what?

The students had to determine the desired outcome and, more importantly, what action they could actually take to begin solving the problem. We had some great conversations and some funny conversations, but underneath all of it students were practicing how to actually respond when a problem comes up instead of just sitting there with the problem.

I really like FlipSwitch for executive functioning skills, and I think there are a lot of places I could take it this year. It could be something we use when common classroom problems come up, but I could also see using it within social studies content. Problems happen. We usually know what we want to happen instead. The hard part is figuring out what we are actually going to do next.

Lessons

Wednesday – Sketch and Tell-O

Thursday – Frayer, Hexagonal Learning

Friday – FlipSwitch Example

Another year is in the books, and I found myself reflecting back on this school year and thinking about the patterns that kept showing up throughout Room 103. Some lessons fade immediately, while others still stick in your head because you remember the conversations students had, the moments where they struggled through an idea, or the days where the room just felt different.

The classroom slowly became more collaborative, more discussion-driven, and more focused on students making sense of ideas instead of just collecting information. Students spent more time talking through evidence, defending claims, revising thinking, and trying to organize complicated ideas together.

At the same time, reflecting on the year also made me realize there are still some things I need to improve moving forward. Some parts of this year worked really well. Other parts showed me where I still need to grow.

Building Thinking Classrooms Changed the Culture of the Room

If there was one thing that probably shaped Room 103 more than anything else this year, it was Building Thinking Classrooms.

The whiteboards completely changed the feel of the classroom. Students were constantly moving, discussing, comparing ideas, revising answers, and building thinking together. The room stopped feeling like a place where students waited for me to confirm whether something was right or wrong. Instead, students started looking at each other’s ideas and trying to figure things out collaboratively.

That shift showed up all year long. It happened during abolitionist comparisons when students debated who had the greatest impact and defended their reasoning with evidence. It happened during Number Mania activities where students used data and statistics to support bigger historical claims. It happened during hexagonal thinking when students argued over which events or ideas represented the biggest tests of the Constitution.

The biggest thing BTC did was make thinking public. Students could physically see ideas developing around the room. They could compare their reasoning with other groups, borrow evidence, challenge each other’s thinking, and refine their own ideas in real time. The conversations became better because students were surrounded by thinking instead of isolated from it.

I also think BTC naturally changed assessment. The classroom became less about quietly completing work and more about defending ideas publicly. Students had to explain themselves. They had to justify connections. They had to support arguments. Those are the kinds of skills that feel more important now than simply memorizing information for a test.

Ignite Talks and Snorkl Changed How I Think About Assessment

One of the biggest instructional shifts for me this year was thinking differently about assessment, especially in a world where AI can generate answers instantly.

The Ignite Talk over the Constitution and early republic unit really reinforced this for me. Students had to organize ideas, explain historical concepts verbally, connect evidence to claims, and communicate their understanding out loud. AI could support preparation and revision, but it could not do the actual thinking for them.

What I liked about using Snorkl alongside writing and discussion activities was how immediate the feedback became. Students no longer had to wait days to find out whether their reasoning made sense. They could revise while the learning was still fresh.

The goal was never to make work easier with AI. The goal was to make feedback faster and revision more meaningful. Students still had to defend ideas, explain evidence, and make sense of historical concepts themselves.

One of my favorite moments all year came during the Cincinnati inquiry when several students asked me to open a Snorkl because they wanted additional feedback on their writing and analysis. That stuck with me because students usually do not ask for more feedback unless they actually care about improving the work.

This year reinforced something I keep thinking about more and more. Assessment cannot just be about recall anymore. Students need opportunities to explain ideas, revise reasoning, communicate verbally, collaborate, and build arguments using evidence. Those skills are much harder to fake, and they also happen to matter far more outside of school.

The Cincinnati Inquiry Unit Became the Strongest Unit of the Year

Out of everything we did this year, the Cincinnati inquiry unit probably became the most meaningful.

Part of that was because it was local history. Students recognized roads, places, and landmarks they had actually seen before. History stopped feeling like something that only happened somewhere else. But the bigger reason the unit worked was because students had to wrestle with contradiction the entire time.

The compelling question asked: “How was Cincinnati a city caught between two worlds before the Civil War?”

That question carried the entire unit because there was never a clean or simple answer. Students explored how Cincinnati represented freedom for some people while still being deeply tied to racism, violence, and systems connected to slavery. They examined the Ohio River as both a symbol of hope and a very real dividing line between free and slave states. They studied Porkopolis, economic growth, abolitionists, anti-abolitionists, and the Cincinnati riots while constantly revisiting the idea that free did not automatically mean equal.

The unit also slowed students down intellectually in a way I really liked. Instead of racing through content, students spent time analyzing evidence, comparing perspectives, discussing tensions, revising ideas, and building understanding piece by piece. The one-pager summative assessments ended up being some of the best work students produced all year because students were not simply repeating information back to me. They were organizing meaning visually and verbally while trying to explain the contradictions within the city itself.

That unit reminded me that inquiry works best when students are trying to make sense of something complicated instead of hunting for a single correct answer.

What I Need to Improve Next Year

As much as I liked many parts of this year, reflecting back also made several things stand out that I need to improve moving forward.

The first is pacing.

Throughout the year, I constantly found myself fighting against time. Shortened classes. Assemblies. Constant schedule changes. Chromebook sign-ins taking forever. Transitions getting interrupted. Some days it felt like half the battle was simply getting everybody logged in and ready to go before losing another chunk of class time.

At the same time, if I am being real about it, I also wish I could have stacked even more EduProtocols together throughout the year. I like tempo in the classroom. I like momentum. I like students constantly shifting between reading, discussing, writing, analyzing, creating, and reflecting while staying connected to the same larger idea or question. Some of my favorite lessons this year were the ones where students moved through multiple structures within the same class period because the energy stayed high and the thinking kept evolving.

That balance is something I am still trying to figure out.

I do not think the answer is slowing everything down completely. I think the answer is being more intentional with where students need time to process and where the lesson benefits from keeping the pace moving. Some moments need discussion and reflection. Other moments benefit from quick transitions, fast reps, and momentum.

Next year, I want to get better at finding that balance between tempo and processing time. I still want the classroom to feel active and layered, but I also want students having enough time to wrestle with ideas instead of feeling like we always have to move to the next thing.

The second thing I need to improve is being more intentional with how I introduce EduProtocols throughout the year.

This year, students eventually became very comfortable with structures like Thick Slides, Thin Slides, Number Mania, CyberSandwich, Frayer Models, Hexagonal Thinking, and 2xCER. By the second half of the year, students understood the expectations, transitions became smoother, and the protocols started disappearing into the thinking itself instead of becoming the focus of the lesson.

But looking back, I think I could do a much better job intentionally sequencing and introducing those structures from the very beginning of the year.

At times, I introduced protocols because they fit the lesson instead of thinking long term about how they connected together across the entire school year. Next year, I want a clearer progression. I want students building confidence with certain structures early so more complicated thinking routines later in the year feel natural instead of brand new.

I also want students understanding why we are using the structures, not just how to complete them. The goal has never been to do EduProtocols just to say we used an EduProtocol. The goal is helping students organize thinking, communicate ideas, collaborate effectively, and reduce cognitive overload so they can focus on the actual learning.

When I look back at Room 103 this year, the best moments were almost never the moments where students were simply getting the right answer. The best moments were when students argued, revised, questioned, connected ideas, defended claims, and struggled through complicated thinking together.